She blinks.

Blinks again.

She still has trouble believing that she's back.

She's been on the porch since the sun rose with Lucina's crown in her lap. She's used to getting up early, but not at all used to getting up early without a purpose, though purpose has eluded her in the past few months. It's why she left after the war in Nohr- what was she fighting for?

After Felicia died, no one.

Not Nohr, not Hoshido, not the royal families (even Camilla), not Odin, not Laslow, and certainly not herself. She can't convince herself that it wasn't a giant waste of time, one that distracted her from looking for a true purpose. All she has to show for it are a dirty sword, a pile of letters, and a poorly crafted ring that still hurts her to look at.

Guess only a fool looks ahead for paths that aren't there, she concludes.

In the background, she hears a sudden thump. She swivels her head around to look for an intruder but realizes after a few more calm and distant thwaps that it's coming from inside the house. She assumes that it's probably Lucina hurrying to throw something together with the same dorky enthusiasm that Severa knows of her. The familiarity is comforting.

Severa sets the tiara in between her calves and awaits her audience with the exalt.

The door opens, and her princess meets her on the porch, carefully sitting next to her and handing her a cup of tea. The steam blows up strands of her hair, but thankfully Lucina is wearing a headband to avoid making a mess. Severa sees her wearing a set of gray nightclothes that covers her from head to toe, wrinkled from recent sleep. "Someone just couldn't wait to see me, huh?" she says with a knowing smile.

Lucina blushes. "I'm glad to see that you're well rested."

Severa breathes on the tea to cool it down. "Thanks, Lucy," she says with a smile.

"Think nothing of it, Sev," Lucina responds.

The pace of Severa's heart hastens for a short second, so much that she almost misses it but definitely doesn't. "Sev," she repeats. "Forgot that you used to call me that."

"It has been a while," Lucina muses apologetically.

Severa takes a sip. "I like it." Lucina beams and Severa adds "Those little… personal touches, you know. It makes me feel…" She shrugs her shoulders. "Like, it reminds me how tight we are."

Lucina blushes. "Right… I didn't know those meant so much, to be honest."

(Severa could make a game out of getting the reaction she wants out of Lucina. She's certainly winning this morning.)

After a shallow breath, she says "They do. I mean…" Thoughts- none dynamic or fleshed, just a wall of something bigger- stop her from speaking further, so she shrugs again.

"Go on," Lucina encourages with an unnervingly genuine smile.

Severa closes her eyes. "But... I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Cause I think about you all the time, and I thought about you a lot in Nohr. I don't really know… what it's all about, to be honest. Just… I don't want…" She doesn't continue, only sighing, placing a hand on Lucina's knee. Lucina, the only thing in her wind-scarred impermanent world that refuses to fall away with everything else.

"You don't want what?"

"I lost someone I loved and cared about," she mumbles, blushing at her tea. "So I'm gonna be worried about you." Before she can draw attention to the obvious truth that she loves Lucina too, she adds "Just because I think I can get that need you have for peace and quiet… that can't be it. It's like we're hiding from all the misery like we think it can't happen again, and…"

She sniffles but doesn't have tears left. "Just… I'd worry a lot less about stupid things if I could help you do more."

That's all she has to say, but Lucina can rest assured that it took everything out of her. She can't admit it yet. She can't admit to Lucina that she can't let someone else she loves fade away and die out; certainly not before she can admit to herself that she didn't do that to Felicia. The idea that she drove the woman she loved to work herself to death for her is so unjust, so inescapable. She can only hope that she's done enough for Lucina to believe that Severa simply cares about her, even when they both know that nothing is simple.

Eventually, Lucina says "I… would be honored if you did," but it doesn't quite feel enough until she confesses, "I think I need that."

Severa nods with a smile because it's okay to be flawed. "Every exalt needs her knight, you know?"

Lucina bristles so hard that Severa jerks her head up, wondering what she said wrong. "I don't want you to be my knight," she says. "That's not how I want you."

It's silent, and neither of them move. A rush falls over Severa as she realizes that the conversation has jumped off an edge, and nothing will be the same when they land. The fall should be too much for her to take right now, but they're both experienced at falling. Besides, all of the soft static of life around her has driven her nuts since the day that Felicia left her in a mess of scars and confusion.

She needs to live again, damn it.

"Then…" She tilts her head towards Lucina and asks "how would you want me?"

Lucina bows her head, hit by Severa's pure curiosity (she isn't subtle). A few scattered raindrops fall from the sky and dampen their clothes occasionally, but it feels nice. "I want you… to be a person here with me because you want to, not because you feel obligated to. I want you to be here… as the person that is the most important one in my life." Severa can't take her eyes off of Lucina as she finishes with "As the woman that I love."

There it is.

Everything starts to make sense.

Severa ducks and runs a hand through her hair, not sure how to answer outside of a few uhhhs and whaaaas that may be the aftereffects of her brain breaking. Lucina jolts, shocked by the weight of her words, like something slipped out before it was supposed to. "I mean- I didn't mean to let that- I wasn't trying to…" Lucina stops stumbling over her words and groans at the rain-torn sky like it's to blame.

"Trying to what?" Severa asks, a wry smirk adorning her face. Before Lucina can speak, probably to trip over herself trying to climb up the cliff they fell off of, she adds "Okay, just so you know, what you say here, it's gonna be very important."

She folds her arms to look stern, but can't imagine she succeeded. This is everything she hoped for, denied, feared, and wanted all at once. Severa could never see a world where Lucina was actually attracted to her, a world where she was more than her princess' emotional mess with a sword and dependency issues.

Even if that world exists, she's not sure what to make of it. She just needs to know that it's real.

Lucina clears her throat, because of course she does. "This has… afflicted me for a while, I'll admit. My affections for you have been more serious for…" She waves a hand. "Let's just say 'some time' and leave it that."

"Hmm." Just enough time for Severa to not even remotely notice, likely because she's an idiot.

Severa can tell her noncommittal answer has sent Lucina into a cool panic, but she's not being a tease; she's confounded. Hastened, Lucina continues. "I'd assumed that it would be easy to hold onto them, but I erred in that. I'd hoped not to try to add that pressure to your life, especially…"

Severa knows why Lucina stopped. "Because of Felicia?"

Lucina nods, eyes closed, ashamed. "I just want you to know that no matter what you say, that won't change that I deeply care about you. I'm sorry that I was this selfish… but everything positive I have said about you, I do mean. I do want you to be my special one, at some point. You mean the world to me, but ultimately I want you to be happy..." Her words fall away.

Severa feels so much pity for her, finally having the courage to admit her affections only to meet Severa's latest ghost, but Severa can't exactly apologize for that- nor should she. Scars on their hearts don't go away. They don't get any prettier. They just fade.

All they can do is try to live with them.

Instead, she looks at Lucina with the affection she's earned by being her. "Your special one?" she teases with a giggle.

"Did I come on too strong?" Lucina blurts.

Severa laughs at the absurdity of her fears. "Not strong enough, probably. Just…" she groans at the sky, rain hitting her nose. "Gods, I keep thinking of basically all the signs you dropped over the years and- okay, you're so obvious in everything, so I'm honestly mortified that I missed it."

"Obvious? Am I now?" Lucina feigns offense like she doesn't damn well know that she is.

"Totally," Severa retorts. "And 'special one' is such a formal, well-wishing, Lucina way of putting things. I swear you're like the books your mom reads."

Lucina narrows her eyes with an alluring smirk. "Ah! So you've read them as well."

Oh, gods damn it. "I never said I didn't!" Severa bites back, cackling. "I'm not proud of it, but I did!"

Lucina giggles. "Still, I can assure you, the words I chose were of my own volition."

"Oh, I know, Lucina. I…" Severa sighs. That's it. It's real. She can tell, even if it'll take years for her to tell why. Maybe Lucina has a thing for bitter catty redheads with battle trauma. Now Severa has to make the next move- whatever "next move" Severa would make.

"All of what you said was very sincere," she admits. "Probably foolishly so. Especially the part about Felicia. That sounds so much like you. The part about you that really frustrates me."

Lucina bows her head, face flushed with shame. "The… martyr complex, right?"

Severa throws her hands up, tea sloshing from her cup a little too close to Lucina's leg. "Okay, that was bitchier wording than I should have used, but… you know how I keep saying you should be happy? I mean it. I sincerely mean it. That's why I push you so much, because…" Damn this woman and how she provokes Severa to be more honest. "Lucy, you should treat yourself better."

Lucina nods, still uncertain. Her head settles into her lap, staring straight ahead. "Again, though, I must ask… will you do the same for yourself?"

Severa doesn't immediately answer. Had you asked her before she left she never would have. That was before she met Felicia. Felicia was sweet as pie, clumsy as hell, and meant every word she said, even the ones she didn't mean to say. She had as many self-esteem issues as Severa, though more innate than the ones Severa can trace the growing infection of. Still, she was… so beautiful, so kind, and gave Severa a glimmer of hope that maybe, through her issues, she could be too.

Severa's memorized the letters that her fiancée sent her, and even if she didn't they're all still in her bag, because it's not like she'll ever be over her all the way. She may as well keep with her all of the times that Felicia wrote that she would make sure that Severa was happy. Severa has never been able to do that on her own, but they both knew the unspoken truth.

The unspoken truth, she speaks to Lucina, her dreamy doe eyes and awkward, genuine smile. "Yeah. I… I think I deserve it. Being happy."

Lucina still doesn't remove her head from her lap, but her eyes break open in shock. Maybe Severa did change for the better. Maybe she made a breakthrough. Maybe it wasn't all a waste of time.

Severa strokes Lucina's hair in a way that beckons her up. Lucina meets her eyes with a smile. "You do deserve it," she breathes. "I pray that you don't forget it."

Severa clicks her tongue. "You've been good to an emotional mess like me," she says. "Stupidly so." Lucina shakes her head with a smirk, but Severa's used to Lucina compulsively denying that Severa deserves less. "If I've ever not told you how much I appreciate it, then that's my mistake. This…"

She sighs. The idea of love scares her- the type of involved, entangled, heightened, terrifying, consequential love that she wants to give Lucina. To love her is one thing. To give her that love is another- very frightening- thing. "Lucy... I think I need some time to, like, fully appreciate it. I'm… gonna be hurt for awhile, but I promise, I won't let it pass me by."

"I understand," Lucina responds simply. If she's disappointed, she doesn't show it. She'd expect that from anyone, but again Lucina leaves her lacking. What a crazy, foolish, amazing woman.

"Thank you," Severa responds. "I really appreciate that, because… for the longest time… it was you. It was always you. Just because I was dense as shit," she emphasizes, drawing more laughter from Lucina "doesn't mean that it isn't still you."

Lucina's eyes widen as they look into Severa's. "Honestly?" she asks, grinning like a fool.

Severa doesn't hesitate. "Absolutely. You deserve someone to be here for you, because you've been here for me."

"Nothing would honor me more," Lucina admits, taking her free hand.

Severa relinquishes it. "Good thing there's nothing I want more either." She's being a little repetitive by now, but sometimes Lucina needs it drilled in her head that she deserves good things.

Lucina smiles like a mushy adorable sap who definitely takes after her mother. "I just hope it'll be worth it. I worry that I'll falter at times, that I may cause you pain. I still have a lot to learn."

"Wh- are you actually telling me that you're afraid you won't be perfect?" Severa keeps her voice down so Lucina doesn't flinch and apologize, but her face betrays how intensely she means things. "We've been learning how to be people for twenty-five years. The day we stop learning is the day we die."

So Lucina knows that she's still Severa, and not about to stop being Severa, she adds "So don't expect me to stop giving you hell, because you probably need my help as much as I need yours."

"Of course," Lucina responds plainly. "We're equals."

Severa shrugs, trying to pretend that she isn't taking things seriously. "I think I can make myself believe that." Overtaken by the emotion she's trying to downplay, Severa leans into Lucina's side. Reflexively, Lucina holds her, making Severa realize how long and through how much they've kept each other afloat, kept each other from sinking, and how, in that way, this was inevitable. The exalt and her…

Wait. Wait a second.

Just as Lucina's fingers wander down to Severa's knees, Severa reaches in between her legs and pulls out the crown, which has comfortably rested against the wooden steps. "Uhm, I hope I didn't, like, mess it up!" she says, dusting its sides off hastily as Lucina follows along with her eyes. As Severa hands it back after so long and says "Thanks for it, babe," Lucina's eyes widen with recognition.

"Is that…"

"Like you don't know. It's your crown!" Severa puts a hand up before Lucina objects. "Like, I'm not saying that you have to wear it-" she gestures at Lucina's hair. "Though, thank the Gods you're wearing a headband." Lucina laughs abruptly but still looks humbled, as though Severa regifting Lucina's gift back to her is a true privilege. It doesn't scratch the surface of what she deserves.

"What should I do with it?" Lucina asks.

Severa wants to slap her forehead. "Lucy, it's your crown. Even if this isn't your Ylisse, this is your crown. Just… put it on display or something. To remind of you of how amazing it is." Severa closes her eyes. "You know… who you are and what you've done."

After too long of her staring at it and working through thoughts Severa is not yet privy to, Lucina sets her teacup on the ground and takes the crown in her hand, where it stays. "What we've done," she corrects, her other hand not letting go of Severa.

Severa coos, reckoning that if Lucina reminds her enough, she may start to believe it. She may believe that she can make it all worthwhile. That she will be something worthwhile. That she's a worthwhile person. That she'll never waste a second of her life again.

She takes another sip of tea and wraps her free arm around Lucina. It's all very much to her liking.

"Thanks, Lucy," she sighs.

For everything, she means.